Over at Secular Right, David Hume has words for our PAL:
Though the author of Atheist Delusions is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher, Lawler reports that his criticism of the New Atheists starts from a Nietzschian perspective. All I have to say is that homey don’t play that game. Friedrich Nietzsche was the product of a line of Lutherans pastors, so it should not surprise that his atheism engages so directly, and inverts so forcefully, the thrust of Christianity. As philosophy goes much of what Nietzsche had to say was captivating, but then I also find science fiction captivating, as well as some portions of the Bible.
The atheism of Nietzsche plays on the terms of Christianity, and that is why Christians often admire his work. It is entirely intelligible to them insofar as it operates in the same universe of morals, albeit characterized by inversions. So naturally Christians castigate atheists who are not Nietzschians, such a stance creates much greater difficulty in fashioning rhetorical thrusts. Too many presuppositions simply are not aligned. Where Lawler and many others declare that Christianity is a necessary precondition of humane values, I simply assert that humane values, or more accurately the values we hold today, used Christianity, as well as other religions and philosophies, as cultural vessels. Morality and ethics existed prior to religion, and the emergence of “Higher Religions” which fused a moral sense with supernatural intuitions was a process which occurred in the light of history [DH's bold]. It was no miracle, and may even have been inevitable once humans reached a particular level of organization.
Of course this sort of argument leaves many loose ends hanging. So be it. Those who believe that they have the Ultimate answer do not, and yet we continue to muddle on.
In comments, he states further that
i’m just really tired of christians telling me what i should believe [ditto] if i’m not going to be a christian.
The passage in which Hume thinks Lawler told him what he should believe seems to be this:
Nietzsche was right that secular Christianity or Christianity without Christ is unsustainable, and that the sentimental preferences of the new atheists are no more than that.
Now, I am all for religious/secular understanding, but I think Lawler’s key word, “unsustainable,” was really not intended at all to apply to individuals. At the level of the individual — that is, of at least some individuals — secular morality of the sort associated with Christianity minus Christ (and God, etc.) is often quite sustainable. Clearly even Nietzsche conceded that the sentimental bluestockings of the world — to use Nietzsche’s language — could carry on in fine post-Christian ethical style for a good long while: either until a world-historical poop-out at the exhausted and enervated end of history, or until some ruddier race or tribe came along and wiped Mr. and Ms. Well-Adjusted Secular Bourgeois into the dustbin of history that Machiavelli associated with the once-flourishing but now forgotten Etruscans.
The broader issue is that smart political theologists have always conceded the same point: there is always a more or less small number of individuals who are able to live pretty well on Earth without recourse to religion. Usually this has been on account of philosophy; but the idea developed that the philosopher could not secure the good life for the many without taking away their liberty. So a project emerged aimed at extending a reasonably good life to the many without imposing either religious or philosophical authority upon them. As far as this political project is concerned, the stakes are high indeed; the number of secularists who are content to secure a good life for themselves while consigning the rest of their fellow man to ignorance and false consciousness seems fixed at a lower level than the number of secularists who can secure a good life for themselves. In brief, ethically humanist secularists have to find it impossible to live well as self-realized parasites on a social order with religious foundations. The internal logic of their morality requires a mission, however incremental, to bring the good (secular) life to the masses.
Secularists of a more Nietzschean persuasion, of course, might find exactly this realization the very condition of possibility for living well. (Cesare Borgia as Pope — is he understood?) Hume’s assertion that our ‘religious phase’ may have been the “inevitable” precondition or ‘vessel’ of secular morality (it isn’t clear whether he means naturally or historically inevitable) can’t get the ethical humanist secularist around the more haunting question of whether the secular political project of mass ethical secularism is viable, much less sustainable — especially if that social order is not to be grounded in philosophy, and especially if the politics in question must, as apparently it must, be one grounded in rights to freedoms.
November 2nd, 2009 | 10:47 am
The fundamental question is, can man as a whole (not just isolated examples here and there) live in a world without the ethics supplied by faith in the transcendent, or religious faith?
I believe the answer is no, which raises the specter that the end goal of the modern project of enlightenment will eventually destroy itself if pushed to its logical conclusion. At some point man wants more than material comfort.
Certainly, the relative plenty brought about through modernity has led to an improvement in the material basis for human existance. However, it seems that there must be a point where some benefits associated with modernity can be embraced, but not so many that it saps man of what it takes to be human.
Faith is an indispensable element of keeping the modern project within appropriate boundaries. Once overstepped, raw relativism enters the world (as it largely has). Few can be true Nietzscheans, but without faith, they can no longer find solace either.
This is the worst of all possibilities. Man must either remain within faith and its ethical restraints or he must be unmoored from those restraints and make his attempt at becoming an Ubermensch. What modern secularist is willing to acknowledge this stark choice? Rather, they try to avoid making any choice and end up bestowing upon the world a vast mass of hollow men without chests scrambling about in the dark searching for a meaning that has been stolen from them. They leave us with Last Men.
November 2nd, 2009 | 10:51 am
On the other hand… for a very long time, there was “always a more or less small number of individuals” who could be literate. Universal literacy was derided as fanciful idea… a desirable but completely impractical notion. That’s not the case today.
Perhaps the “number of individuals who are able to live pretty well on Earth without recourse to religion” has always been “small”… but that’s no reason to assume it must remain so. Quite a few countries are majority-secular these days and seem to be doing all right (e.g. Denmark, Sweden).
November 2nd, 2009 | 12:15 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Susan Hogan and Ukchristianity, Curtis Lilly. Curtis Lilly said: Prospects for Secularists » Postmodern Conservative | A First …: The atheism of Nietzsche plays on the terms .. http://bit.ly/15JoxJ [...]
November 2nd, 2009 | 12:50 pm
Your whinging is quite amusing to me. I don’t care what you think about religion at all. I am 100% the libertarian transhumanist and I will never change. I don’t care what any religion has to say about this because I do not recognize any religion or any concept of “god” (however you choose to define it) as having any jurisdiction over me and my actions. I consider myself to be autonomous from any god or religion.
As far as rights and freedoms go. Of course, I consider myself to be the owner of my life and body. I do not recognize institutional authority as being an fundamental value in its own right. It seems to be the nature of religion to believe in the legitimacy of institutional authority. Thus, I can never accept your religious world-view because I consider it incompatible on a fundamental level with my perception as an autonomous being and my libertarian world-view.
Of course, I’m not about to convince you of my worldview and there is zero possibility of I ever subscribing to your worldview. Thus, we can only agree to disagree.
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:12 pm
Kurt — well, maybe. Without snark let me say it depends on what your definition of ‘institution’ is. Certainly it isn’t unnatural for a religious person to find certain institutional authorities legitimate despite NOT belonging to them. And certainly we’re all autonomous to some degree. The bottom line as far as the “whinging” is concerned is that I wish you good luck in creating a society full of people like yourself — although I strongly suspect that you don’t wish to create one. And to the extent that you don’t, I expect it’ll be all the easier for us to amicably agree to disagree. After all, presumably we have at least some overlapping political interests…
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:30 pm
[...] James Poulos at PomoCon responds to Khan: Now, I am all for religious/secular understanding, but I think Lawler’s key word, “unsustainable,” was really not intended at all to apply to individuals. At the level of the individual — that is, of at least some individuals — secular morality of the sort associated with Christianity minus Christ (and God, etc.) is often quite sustainable. Clearly even Nietzsche conceded that the sentimental bluestockings of the world — to use Nietzsche’s language — could carry on in fine post-Christian ethical style for a good long while: either until a world-historical poop-out at the exhausted and enervated end of history, or until some ruddier race or tribe came along and wiped Mr. and Ms. Well-Adjusted Secular Bourgeois into the dustbin of history that Machiavelli associated with the once-flourishing but now forgotten Etruscans. [...]
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:32 pm
I think that secular Christianity is unsustainable, even at the individual level for the simple reason that all ethics and purposes of life assume a metaphysics. If your metaphysics is atheistic naturalism, Nietzsche is correct — all we are is atoms and all morality is just restricting various configurations of atoms. How can some configurations of atoms wrong and some right in any absolute sense? Morality is just a game we trick ourselves into playing, and since we invent the rules, we can rationalize our way out of them. So abortion and euthanasia are okay but murder is wrong — unless we change our minds because someone we love is negatively affected by them — but that can change again if we see the “positive result”.
This sort of flip flopping happens all the time, even to weak Christians. A google search will reveal that there are thousands upon thousands of people who say “I used to believe in God until my relative died”. As tragic as it is, and as much as these people need our sympathies, it’s important to recognize that death happens to all people. It did when these people believed in God too. Without a solid metaphysics, emotions change attitudes.
That being said, non-Christian secular systems can be quite sustainable. Stoicism and Confucianism are two prime examples. But even these secular systems assume a very strong metaphysics involving Providence of some sort — without which the whole system would fall apart.
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:40 pm
although I strongly suspect that you don’t wish to create one.
What on Earth makes you think that?
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:49 pm
Having told you that I am the hard-core “Ayn Rand” libertarian, I do agree that we have overlapping political interests. Mainly stopping the liberal-left sponsored intrusion of government power and regulation into our personal and economic lives. For example, if Huckabee had the same position on economic issues as, say, Ron Paul, I would have no problem supporting and voting for him as president. Since I do not have kids, most of the issues that you social conservatives are into are very peripheral to my life and objectives.
However, there is one issue where I think some of the social conservatives are screwing the pooch on. I am into radical life extension, by SENS, synthetic biology, or other kind of biotechnology. I consider this to be both a personal issue as well as an existential one for me (I simply do not relate to what Kass refers to as “finitude”), meaning that it is a non-negotiable issue for me. Yet, most of the social conservatives, including those here on your website, have expressed hostility towards such life extension. This is not the way for you to convince people like me to allie ourselves with your cause.
November 2nd, 2009 | 2:01 pm
this is “david hume.” for the record:
1) i think the atoms from which our morality is created through consensus is constrained by our evolutionary heritage. the nature of the morality is specified by particular history.
2) “higher religion” has been critical as a vessel for standardizing morality over the past 2,000 years.
3) i have no great expectation that most of humanity will become scientific materialists in the near future. even without strong commitment to christian religion it seems that large numbers adhere to “supernaturalist” positions.
4) as for the role of philosophy, i see it as relevant only for a tiny eite. most people have always been, and will be, too unintelligent for that sort of cognition.
5) finally, i’m not a psychic so i can’t predict the future. i can say that we can look to some european nations, but especially east asian ones, for longer histories of a much weaker public role for religion in enforcing morality. there is in fact strong evidence that south korea has been undergoing “confessionalization” over the past 100 years. if you can find data hat shows south koreans are now more moral or ethic, that might get us somewhere.
November 2nd, 2009 | 3:30 pm
I like this discussion because in the end it does stem from the metaphysical undersTanding of the physicists and nihilism. I disagree that such an understanding necessarily negates morality however I think there is an important distinction between negation and differrentation. I don’t think I am the only one who accepts the nihilistic 3rd person but is religious in the esense that my personal existence lining up with religious virtue. Such a stand is key in understanding the good and being happy. I agree with Kurt on the 2nd perso libertarian gov philosophy but he is too dogmatic — I get it but you get it too much. Excess is real and though libertarian utopia is one utopi actually achieveable it is only a political utopia not personal.. It is personal hell really hence the lack of kids I would suspect. Thus through differentian we reach a moderated end devoid of the excesses and coherent if understood in this sense. It is also philosophically deep in that it requires constant cultivation (which is the definition of philosophy).
November 2nd, 2009 | 3:56 pm
kurt9,
If you are truly the master of your fate and you have a hard time dealing with finitude, I suggest that you have a look at this picture of the universe:
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg
A theist can stand at the edge of this extreme finitude and rejoice with Psalm 19 and Isaiah 40:22 on his lips.
Transhumanism must deal with the fact that they are finite — insignificantly finite compared to space and time. And so fragile that if something almost infinitely smaller speck of dust from the universal scale were to come our way, we would all be dead. Nothing Transhumanism can do will change that and no amount of bravado like “I am the captain of my ship, the master of my soul” will change that.
WRT, I’m sure most people here will say transhumanism is okay, as long as it harms no-one. But it doesn’t. Even if transhumanism can be done ethically, it will not result in any good. The great literature of the ages provide compelling arguments against transhumanism with very few glamourizing it. If all become immortal, life become banal and suicide become a choice everyone ultimately makes. The short story about a “secular heaven” in “The history of the world in ten and a half chapters” captures this nicely. If only a few choose transhumanism, they will either be oppressed for the protection of the majority, as the Struldbrugs of Jonathon Swift. Or control the world to the disadvantage to the mortals, as in the case of many vampire stories. Or a Hitler or Stalin or Kim Jong Il will become transhuman, prevent anyone else from becoming transhuman, and use his immortality to prove that he is a god.
It may be possible for transhumanism (beyond simply extending life for a few decades) to result in an undeniable good but the burden of proof is for the transhumanist.
November 2nd, 2009 | 4:11 pm
The various ideologies of secularism portend the possibilities of the gnostic hope of bringing about a more perfect regime and/or the creation of immanentist ideologies instituted by human action. Perhaps the secularist inclination is a manifestation of alienation (allotriosis) explained by the Stoics when the non-existent reality, the transcendent (God) is abandoned by people who are suffering from a mental or spiritual pathology. For these folks any interpretation of reality is predicated on a deformed existence that excludes the ground.
November 2nd, 2009 | 4:16 pm
A few comments:
The claim was made that morality and ethics existed historically prior to religion. What is at stake in this claim is whether morality and ethics belong to the human condition in a more fundamental way than does religion. The secularists would want to say that it does. I would say that the relationship between the two is more complicated than can be described by one’s priority over the other. But either way, the matter won’t very well be settled by collecting and analyzing historical data. The reason for this is that we don’t know how to interpret historical data without having all sorts of presuppositions about the human condition. There are plenty of ways to justify these presuppositions, but they all involve the sorts of skills you find in the great novelists rather than those you find in the great scientists. My point, here, is not to argue against the secularist claim about the priority of ethics to religion but rather to point out what sort of claim it must be.
Whether a secular society might be sustainable really hinges on that question. But there are multiple difficulties with that. Secularism is no more a single position than is religion.
If we’re going to say that the “good” kinds of secularism, which support human rights and human dignity, are parasitic on society at large being Christian, we can only say this if we think that there is something inconsistent about the good secularist’s position. It does not need to be internally inconsistent, and in fact, if we’re talking about culture, here, logical inconsistencies can be relatively stable. For instance, no set of laws that actually governs a people will look like something any individual might have conceived. Laws are negotiated among differing parties, some of whom may have attained consistency at an individual scale; but under no circumstances will you find total logical consistency after the negotiation. This is the way it is with things cultural. The kind of inconsistency we’re looking for is psychological or perhaps sociological. It’s never the plain logical contradictions that are of concern, because plain logical contradictions are plain. Even individuals cannot hold onto those once they are pointed out. But if a certain opinion runs contrary to who we are as human beings, this opinion can last long enough to cause some harm. But if we are charging the secularists with that, then we had better admit that we are charging them with something like false consciousness. Oh, it isn’t the Marxist false consciousness, which says that they are just unwitting pawns in an economic system. But it is the claim that they (like we) have a kind of desire to be like God — that they (like we) are fallen creatures. The supposed breakdown of “the enlightenment project” can only be interpreted through some framework. Christianity will do as a framework. But we can hardly be surprised if, when secularists are confronted by Christians telling them that really what they’re on about is just a re-paganized Christianity, an idolatrous humanism just like that of Adam in the Garden — when they are confronted with that opinion, we can hardly be surprised to see their indignation and frustration. For not only does it try to explain their opinions according to things the existence of which they may not even acknowledge, it also fits them into a category — the “secularists” — which includes members that may not otherwise share much in common with each other.
November 2nd, 2009 | 6:30 pm
I’m sure most people here will say transhumanism is okay, as long as it harms no-one. But it doesn’t.
We have as much a right to pursue transhumanism as you have the right to practice Christianity. We don’t have to show any burden of proof because we don’t have to justify our choices to people like you at all, any more than you have to justify your right to believe in Christianity to seculars. Whats fair for one is fair for all.
The notion that transhumanism is harmful is a slanderous lie. This lie is used as justification for implementing restrictions on our freedom of choice, and is unacceptable. I don’t care what any philosopher or writer in the past has said against life extension. Anyone who is against radical life extension is just plain wrong, period. Whatever their arguments are completely meaningless to us.
If all become immortal, life become banal and suicide become a choice everyone ultimately makes.
WTF? What a BFD! So we make suicide’s a civil right. I don’t give a rat’s ass.
In any case, One of you here mentioned that there are overlapping political issues that we can find common ground on. I just told you what I can compromise on and what is non-negotiable. Successful coalition building means that we identify the issues we have in common and work together to make it happen.
You want people to get into stable marriages before having kids. Hey, I’m right there with you. You want parents to have more control over what the school system teaches their kids, I’m right there with you on this as well. Believe it or not, many of us “transhumanists” (as you choose to call us) agree with you on many of these family issues. We support you on the family issue, and you help us keep excessive government regulation and control out of the many other areas of our lives. This is called coalition building or “horse trading”. This is a reasonable basis for coalition that you could have with us. But, instead, you choose to alienate us.
You don’t like transhumanism. Fine. I don’t care. If you choose to attack and alienate us rather than enlist us as allies to support you on what we have in common, then you cannot expect us to support you in any manner, whatsoever.
November 2nd, 2009 | 8:19 pm
James, it seems this line of reasoning about religion was held by Voltaire and of course infamously by Straussians. i.e. we can handle being atheists but the masses can’t. Beneath it is this kind of contempt for the masses I’ve always found deeply troubling. Further it leads to a kind of double truth less Nietzschean than something akin to the stereotype of Averroism.
The problem I have with your justification of this more Straussian order is the idea that it is the only way. So when you call atheists who are attempting to break up this order “parasites” it presupposes that this is the only order there can be. But surely that is anything but clear.
November 2nd, 2009 | 9:37 pm
kurt9, you say that suggesting that transhumanism harms people is a slanderous lie. If this is so, then the people who say that it harms people must not actually believe it to be true. Can you demonstrate this?
November 2nd, 2009 | 11:48 pm
I recognize no consensus can be found as to the answer to this question, but what is the majority opinion here? Can humanity, as a whole, live within boundaries without religious foundations? Can secular humanism, parasitic or not, survive internal inconsistency?
I have made my thoughts fairly evident above. I think this is one of the most fundamental questions with enormous implications relative to political order.
November 3rd, 2009 | 2:38 am
Greg, I agree that this is a fundamental question. However, isn’t asking for the majority opinion regarding this question itself problematic? The truth of the matter probably points beyond what the majority would concur with. Truth is truth–is it not?. I suppose you mean the majority commenting on this blog. Regardless, this question seems to be only one for the few–for many it is harebrained philosophy. Any fifth grader knows what is true and what is the right thing to do.
But let’s take this question as fundamental–which i agree it is even if it is acute for a few–at least most of the time. You claim that human beings cannot live without the order (and limits) supplied by divine revelation. I’m inclined to agree with you, but not simply because without such limits one is riddled with unsustainable inconsistencies. The relativism of modern thought, and the conclusion that some may perspicaciously draw from this that here is nothing other than superman or last man perhaps misses the point. No doubt, divine revelation makes a claim to truth–but Nietzsche isn’t the whole of philosophy either.
Which thought leads me to conclude that your question is one regarding the very possibility of philosophy. There are innumerable obstacles circumstantial, categorical and consequential to philosophy. Philosophy is not obviously ready to hand. Modernity–in its science, rationalism, secularism, liberalism and technology–tends to think that philosophy is as easy as doing it. In fact, it often equates itself with philosophy. Hegel says–without foundations as he claims–that one just simply needs to enter into it (no doubt with rigor). This, it seems to me, is easier said than done–and Hegel’s thought ends up being a complex immensity (if not a kind of giganticism–to borrow from Heidegger).
It is true that philosophy can provide knowledge of the natural ends of human beings, but these seem to be too easily shown as perspectives in the course of modern scientific discourse. Hegel claims the ancients begin philosophic inquiry with things, and the moderns begin with concepts. He himself begins with both and this leads to absolute knowledge. However, Nietzsche–with a decayed Hegelianism–speaks of the absolute as simply another perspective.
I tend to think that this situation has always been the case with regard to philosophy. Aristotle gives similar accounts of the previous philosophy of his day. This–perhaps–is one reason why philosophy has generally presented as a possession of the few–that which is fine, beautiful, difficult and rare.
Logos never finds itself in Habermasian conditions of ideality–and it is probably pointless to strive for such canons of rational legitimacy. Of course this is no reason to reduce everything to rhetoric, but philosophy–or at least its potential–as one manifestation of logos comes into itself in the midst of political dispute. It is something from which it cannot seem to escape. Hence philosophy as a way of life, is also always confronted with the claims of the divine too, as civil theology to be sure, but also as a claim to knowledge and truth. The near impossibility of philosophy is not a claim for fideism, but it is a frank acknowledgement of a stark alternative.
Reason and revelation, because they are embroiled in politics but not necessarily of it, do not necessarily meet as equal interlocutors in an ideal speech situation even on their own terms. The problems of modernity are not simply a problem of a loss of philosophy or divine revelation, but a forgetting of the two as alternatives for the way of life for the human being.
November 3rd, 2009 | 5:00 am
Your question about, “Can humanity, as a whole, live within boundaries without religious foundations?”
First, we should try and define ‘religious foundations.’ Does that mean ‘God’ centered rules for our moral code(s)? Or does it mean an actual religious institution deciding proper morals of us? Or does it simply mean without having a belief in a supernatural being? Also, what exactly is ‘boundaries?’ I don’t think people live in boundaries with religious foundations. So, that’s an easy no for me. Though I might have stricter boundaries than others, you’d have to be more specific.
Let’s talk about western societies and cultures that are so heavily influenced by religion? Someone above mentioned counties in Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, which are quite secular; yet are very moral & ethical. You can argue the Christopher Hitchens approach and say lets all be cultural Christians, without the whole believing in Jesus, God, and the Bible. This will only last so long before people start to question why should I hold on to these values when I’m never going to be held accountable for my actions or why do so when it’s simply easier for me to not to hold any particular values. You then end up picking and choosing and will only pick things that will cause you the greatest amount of pleasure, naturally.
The problem with this as we know is that the Scandinavian countries and most of Europe for that matter got much of their morality and even became civilized because of religion, particularly Christianity. Going back to the Scandinavian countries we see because of their Christian/Protestant/Lutheran heritage that today even with a large portion of their citizens being secular they are still culturally indoctrinated with Judeo-Christian values.
However, we do see in Europe with its raise of secularism that nihilism and defeatism are growing. For them without God, there are no objective morals and values. We see it oh too often, the expression everything is permissible. It inevitability leads to hedonism; e.g. sexual promiscuity, drugs, and wild living. Not only that many of the world’s societies are becoming more pluralistic and because of that you have moral relativism, which obviously has its problems. I’m arguing when countries become secular or subvert their religious values, their culture degrades. Even though I have been talking about western societies, I believe this is equally applicable for eastern societies as well. You take away or say humanity as a whole have no religious foundations; you take away peoples’ meaning of life. Most can’t go on living a life (especially a very productive and happy one) where there is no real meaning to them.
As far as your question, “Can secular humanism, parasitic or not, survive internal inconsistency?”
I say yes, as long as there is an authority pushing it forward. For example, colleges make students take several liberal art classes, which simply push secular humanism. IMO, that’s exactly what it will take to survive. The usage of government and schools pushing the agenda forward will allow secular humanism to ‘survive.’ Also, many TV commercials will push humanism without mentioning God, rather they say we should all volunteer and be good, moral, and ethical people. Without an authority pushing the agenda forward secularists will end up apathetic towards their humanism and take the Darwinian approach…. survival of the fittest. Even if they don’t wish to go that far they could just argue, “Who cares.”
November 3rd, 2009 | 7:05 am
Chesterton’s genealogy of morals:
The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have been exposed to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far as they meant that there is at the back of all historic government an idea of content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right. But they really were wrong, in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, “I will not hit you if you do not hit me”; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said,”We must not hit each other in the holy place.” They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar, and found that they were clean. The history of the Jews is the only early document known to most Englishmen, and the facts can be judged sufficiently from that. The Ten Commandments which have been found substantially common to mankind were merely military commands;a code of regimental orders, issued to protect a certain ark across a certain desert. Anarchy was evil because it endangered the sanctity. And only when they made a holy day for God did they find they had made a holiday for men. ['Orthodoxy']
IMO secularists are just happy clapping into their Jesusless future. They squander Christian moral capital and invest nothing for those that come after. They expect justice and social reform like abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, solidarity to come from where? We’re doomed. http://menckenclub.blogspot.com/2009/08/2009-conference-schedule.html
Christianity provides:
-sanction: what happens to you if you don’t do the good – ultimate judgment.
Inspiration: why do the good? Salvation and eternal beatitude.
Content: what is the good? Jesus in word and deed. His affirmation and extension of the moral law as understood then and prohibitions on misguided takes on the moral law as then understood.
If you can tolerate another long quote here is David Hart again:
In purely theoretical terms, the question of the transcendent source of reality is an ontological—not a causal—question: not how things have come to be what they are, but how it is that things exist at all. And none of the customary post-Christian attempts to make the question of being disappear can possibly succeed: even if physics can trace all of time and space back to a single self-sufficient set of laws, that those laws exist at all must remain an imponderable problem for materialist thought (for possibility, no less than actuality, must first of all be); all the brave efforts of analytic philosophy to conjure the ontological question away as a fallacy of grammar have failed and always will; continental philosophy’s attempts at a non-metaphysical ontology are notable chiefly for their lack of explanatory power. In the terms of Thomas Aquinas, there is simply an obvious incommensurability between the essence and the existence of things, and hence finite reality cannot account for its own being. And if this incommensurability is considered with adequate probity and clarity, it cannot fail but lead reflection towards something like what Thomas calls the actus essendi subsistens—the subsistent act of being—which is one of his most beautiful names for God.
Of course, very few persons ever have an occasion to think of reality in terms so abstract. But I suspect that this recognition of the sheer fortuity of existence—the sheer impossibility of anything’s essence ever being adequate to its existence—is what a certain sort of phenomenologist would call a “primordial intuition.” Though we may not all have concepts available to us to understand it, all of us experience from time to time that kind of wonder that for Plato and Aristotle is the beginning of all philosophy, that sudden immediate knowledge that existence is something in excess of everything that is, something not intrinsic to it, something strange in its familiarity and transcendent in its immanence. This is an awareness so obvious that there may never be a theoretical language sufficiently limpid and innocent to express it properly, but in it is a wisdom basic to all reflective thought. To fail to see it requires either an irredeemably brutish mind or a willful obtuseness of the sort that only years of education can induce. And this, I venture to say, is why atheism cannot win out in the end: it requires a moral and intellectual coarseness—a blindness to the obvious—too immense for the majority of mankind.
November 3rd, 2009 | 3:43 pm
The way I always understood it was that always possible to divide things up into “good” and “evil”, and any such divisions are equally capable of holding together, or being made to hold together.
At the same time, no such moral philosophy was capable of answering the question, “why prefer good to evil?” All attempts to do so that come even close to success do so by aligning the “good and evil” of their philosophy with the “good and bad” of some wielder of power, and so ultimately basing morality on instrumentality. The creation and maintenance of a god is one of the simpler and less vulnerable ways to accomplish this, and the only viable way in a world-culture in which no one temporal power attains complete hegemony.
The superior course of action, of course, is to realize and accept that there is no reason to prefer good to evil.
November 4th, 2009 | 1:37 am
[...] got a bit of traction. Razib put up some comments at Secular Right. There were then two more posts (here and here) at Postmodern Conservative. I think my own position was misunderstood a little. I’m [...]
November 4th, 2009 | 12:31 pm
Actually, kurt9, my reasoning was completely secular — acceptable to even strongly anti-Christian atheists like Bertrand Russell (e.g. http://greatcloud.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/bertrand-russell-on-the-meaning-of-life/ ). No you don’t have to justify your beliefs to me or anyone else, but if you are trying to convince someone else of your beliefs, that is another story.
What I am trying to say is that the concensus, independent of whether you are atheist or theist or deist or pantheist or Stoic or Confucian or Epicurian or any other belief is that eternal life is futile. And philisophers and authors throughout the centuries, who at least try to construct a world where immortality is the norm or at least available as an option, have failed. As gently as I can, I’m trying to say that the transhumanism utopia is a pipe dream and likely a distopia. As a former scientist I can tell you that there is zero chance it will happen in your lifetime, even if it were possible. If all the knowledge were available today (which is far from being the truth), the clinical trials and longitudinal studies alone would surpass your lifetime. Getting it cheap enough and available enough so that anyone other than the very rich and the dictators of the would will have access to it will take far more time.
Death, for you friend and I is an inevitability. We might extend our lives by a few decades, but the grave is your ultimate destination. Since you have no affinity to Christianity, please at least read the Stoics. The “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius” contains several sections on death and our place in the grand scheme of things. It should help reduce your fear of death. And please look at the picture of the universe I posted:
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg
How can you look at that and not see that any bravado about being the master of your own fate, is as Ecclesiastes put it “vanity and a striving after wind”. We are less than a speck of dust on Mount Everest. No matter how long you live or what you do, you will still be an insignificant speck of dust influencing other specks of dust. Unless, of course life is more than just matter in motion directed by chance, inertia, and entropy.
November 4th, 2009 | 8:11 pm
Death, for you friend and I is an inevitability. We might extend our lives by a few decades, but the grave is your ultimate destination.
No, you got that the wrong way around. It’s your fate, not mine. I am 80% convinced that I will make the actuarial escape velocity in the next 10 years (there are things that I am trying on myself that I will not discuss here, but that are working for me). After that, its just a matter of staying ahead of the curve and avoiding accidents.
I deal with others on the basis of mutual respect and rational self interest. This is my standard of morality and the only one that I will ever live by. This is really a restatement of your Christian “golden rule”. The golden rule makes sense to me and is the only useful contribution to civilization made by your Christian religion. I see no reason to believe in any other aspect of your religion as it constrains my freedom of action to an unacceptable degree.
As for transhumanism, I stand by my point. We have as much right to pursue transhumanism as you have to practice your Christian religion. Indeed, your golden rule demands such reciprocity. If you deny the rights of others to live by their own choices, you effectively deny the same rights to yourself. You cannot expect others to respect your rights and beliefs without offering the same respect for others. Respect is a two-way street. In any case, I don’t have to convince you of my beliefs or anything that I do, because I do not require your approval to do what I want. My beliefs and actions are as legitimate to me as yours are to you. This is the reality that you must learn to accept.
November 4th, 2009 | 8:28 pm
Since you guys don’t like life extension, I certainly don’t want anything to do with you or your religion. Thanks for clarifying where you stand with regards to this issue.
November 5th, 2009 | 2:58 am
Responding the kurt9′s above post.
I don’t argue against life extension. I think most of our focus is centered around a better life; not necessarily a longer life (though, I want to live a long and healthy life). I don’t believe they are parallel. Longer Life = Better Life.
For me… only concerned about longevity of life, fails in comparison when dealing with moral deterioration of humanity.
Like this quote, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)
November 6th, 2009 | 3:57 am
When I was young man I had a job in a vivisection clinic. Torturing sheep with smoke inhalation injury, as well as as giving the sheep third degree flesh burns, in order to test the efficacy of drugs in treating these injuries. Two stories above us suffered children who had suffered the most horrendous of smoke and fire injuries you could imagine. A friend of mine grimly and tastelessly joked–the crispy critters. This torture of sheep seemed justified in the light of the unspeakable suffering of the innocents above. This was real life and death stuff–for the sheep–and more importantly for the burned children.
I worked with a doctor named Jamie. A dutiful Irishman–who somehow ended up getting his undergraduate degree at Slippery Rock University–he did his job with the competence one would expect. he knew the purpose of the lab, and he had the knowledge and the long haul vision to be able to torture the sheep. An Irish atheist (it is a distinctive type) he assigned me james Joyce for the summer I worked there and quizzed me on the details of Stephen Daedalus’ life. he had confidence, hence he was arrogant. Nonetheless, there was much to admire in him.
One day at lunch–after a thorochotomy of sheep placing catheters in in its heart’s atrium as well as in a few lymph nodes–he spoke of his desire to live at least a hundred years. He considered longevity the key to the good life. In his charming accent, and over buttered carroty and pork chops in the hospital cafeteria, he spoke of his desire to conquer death. He knew that longevity was key, but to my 18 year old pious catholic mind I wondered. My desires were not at all in that direction, and I never became the pre-med student i thought I might become as a consequence.
After lunch, we euthanized a sheep. With a predose of ketamine, we shot 60 CCs of potassium chloride straight in the heart catheter of the sheep. The beast died quickly, and an autopsy of its lungs was taken. I got to bag the sheep and drag it to the cooler where it awaited the incinerator.
Meanwhile, the children upstairs suffered, Jamie dreamed of immortality, and I knew I would never go to med school.
November 9th, 2009 | 6:19 am
I suppose it is too late to respond to Kurt 9′s defense of self-interest, but I will carry on nonetheless. He doesn’t want anything to do with “our” religion. His insistence that he he is 80% sure that he will will beat the normal actuarial tables is quite astonishing. Let’s hope he doesn’t get hit by the proverbial bus.
His desire for life at all costs reminds me of a class i took on medieval political thought. In this class there was a scandal in that Thomas made arguments for human life at all costs. Thomas’ Xianity apparently got the better of him–he wasn’t Aristotelian enough. His ambivalence regarding megalopsychia seemed to be a sell out to these students. Proud as they were, they couldn’t understand why a life without the most proud assertions of human being could be ruled out of the treatise on virtues. These proud students defended the dignity of a human asserting his ownmost superiority, even if it meant hard times (to say the least) for those who by fortune found themselves in the banausic pursuits.
Now here is Kurt 9 manfully asserting his right to longevity against a bunch of pious Christians. He damns us in our small mindedness that claims all life is worth the love that our Savior demands. He, in tune with the tribe of lion of modernity, wants to push his ambition for himself in order to beat actuarial tables. He will live for ever–surely this life will be based on the endless work of serious scientists in collective who have worked on the longevity issue.
Perhaps Kurt 9 is ungrateful for the bureaucratic mechanism that has provided for his longevity–after all he will pay for it through his stock dividends. He has no need to be grateful to anyone–including his parents (the stingy assholes who spend his inheritance on themselves). He can’t complain, he would do the same if he were in their shoes.
i wish Kurt 9 the best in his wonderful life. An old age taken care of machines surely beats loved ones taking care of you (after all they are resentful and would wish you die before your bills suck up whatever savings you have managed to keep). Even if you have religious orders taking care of your decaying body, there is something owed.
I hope Kurt 9 spends his time figuring out a way to take care of the mass of human flesh that will live on and on in his actuary. True, some will be smokers, and others will be struck with terminal diseases randomly (surely not Kurt 9). Beating the odds is the good life. Virtue is reduced to the World Series of Poker. Texas Hold ‘Em. The dude with sunglasses always wins. So, Kurt 9–be sure to go to the mall and the Sunglass Hut. Buy a pair of Ray Bans–may as well look cool as you beat the the death tables.
November 9th, 2009 | 10:54 pm
John,
Yada, yada, yada. Whatever. I don’t tell you what to do. You’re still trying to tell me what to do. Give it up. This shtick has no traction.
The rest of you,
What can I say? I decided long ago that your god and your religion doesn’t do it for me. The original article bemoaned the lack of attention paid to your religion by those of us who choose to dump it. I responded by telling you that I have no problem with your religion as long as it did not interfere with my personal choices and goals in life. instead of explaining to me how your religion can fit with my choices and goals in life, you instead criticize me for what I want. This is certainly not the way to win friends and influence people. At least not people like myself.
Never once did I suggest or even insinuate that your religion was not an appropriate choice for you. I show respect for your choices. You fail to show respect for mine. What can I say? I can certainly understand how people can be turned off by attitudes such as yours. I really do believe that religion, or at least your version of it, is declining in the West. I think your arrogant attitudes, that you are right and everyone else is wrong, is a major contributor to this decline. You people are your own worst sales people. You want to sell me on your religion, you should treat me as the honorable customer and show how your religion can get me what I want. You insult me as the customer by telling me that what I want is wrong and you loose the sale, plain and simple. If you can’t sell me on your meme by appealing to what I want, you have no business insulting me by continuing to thrust it in my face or the faces of anyone else who wants nothing to do with it.
If your religion dies (and I think it will), you can only blame yourselves. I won’t miss it for an instant.
November 10th, 2009 | 12:35 am
You know, whats funny about this whole argument is that, by being into life extension, you guys think that I am into life above all else and that I am more afraid to die than most others. However, this is actually not the case. I used to be into extreme sports. I was an avid mountain climber (almost was killed three times) and speed skiing. My wife made me give them up, I am considering taking up paragliding next year. If I do, I will tell my wife that the gear is for kite surfing (because the gear looks the same for both sports). If I were single, I would still be into these sports.
Its not that I’m afraid to die. I am no more, and probably somewhat less, afraid to die than the guy next to me. What IS unacceptable to me is having to limit my life options because of a number on a document called my birth certificate. I should be able to get up each morning and be able to live my life like I am 25 years old for as long as I live.
November 10th, 2009 | 1:56 pm
You know, you’re not just attacking my individualism, but you are attacking your conservative concept of group identity as well. I have been in the life extension movement for over 20 years. I was a part of the original milieu that existed in SoCal in the late 80′s (Regis’s “Great Mambo Chicken” depicts this milieu quite well). This means that the closest and deepest friendships that I have had for over 20 years are people who share my beliefs about transhumanism and life extension. These people are my community. The most fundamental aspect of conservatism is to stand by and defend ones community. You guys are actually insinuating that I should quit my community in order to join your religion. What irony you guys have. What does this say about your attitudes towards conservatism and respect for ones friends and community.
You guys are morally and intellectually bankrupt. You have nothing of value to offer me.
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